


Like a Shotgun Needs an Outcome

by Barkour



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, Fight Sex, Pre-Canon, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-20
Updated: 2011-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-19 15:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like a shotgun, Sif can't be outdone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Shotgun Needs an Outcome

**Author's Note:**

> For [this prompt](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/1123.html?thread=474723#t474723) at [norsekink](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/). The title and summary are from Lykke Li's "[Get Some](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TTPGAy5H_E)."

Loki looked up from his book. A vast shadow filled the door, then it split in two: Thor the one, the other Sif. His thumb creased the page. He stilled his hands lest they betray him. Thor and Sif were laughing; they had not seen him. Sif swept hair - dark, loose - from her brow.

"And what is it that has the both of you laughing so very loudly?" Loki inquired politely. He made a show of cradling the book in his fingers.

Thor straightened. He grinned, still, as he looked to Loki, who had taken the sofa as his own and thrown his legs across it.

"Sorry, brother. I hadn't known you were here. I'll be just a moment," he said to Sif.

She laughed again and mimed striking him as he moved around her. The muscles in her upper arm tightened, hard beneath her skin. Thor passed from the room.

Loki watched her as she brushed sweat from the end of her nose. Her lips curled in. No doubt she sucked the salt off them. The book was heavy in his hands; his wrists ached unaccountably. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling.

"You look a mess," he said.

Sif looked to him then. The hollow of her throat glimmered, slick with sweat. The fierce line of her clavicle peeked out of her tunic. The top two buttons lay undone. She arched her right eyebrow.

"Pardon me my disrepair, your worshipfulness," she drawled. "If I'd known, I would have changed."

They had come direct from the practice yard. A certain swiftness marred her breath and her chest rose out of rhythm. She would have changed quickly. Her hair would have caught in her collar. Perhaps she would have sighed as she pulled it free, too little and too familiar an inconvenience to waste a curse upon. Long, callused soldier's fingers picking her fine hair out of her shirt.

"Oh, not on my account," he said. "I would hate to put you out."

"Then you may rest easy," she said. "You haven't."

Her gaze rolled from him. Absently, Sif reached to gather her hair. Sweat flashed in her elbow. She twisted her hair in a knot and let the tail fall down her nape, her back. In the fair afternoon light she shone like the reflection of fire off a blade. Bright Sif, clever Sif, candescent Sif. He did not know how Thor could stand to be near her. Loki felt as if he would burn if she looked at him again.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" he said. He wished he hadn't. Loki Silvertongue, they called him; but his tongue felt made of stone. His mouth pinched.

She looked at him again. Her eyes were bright, lively, and she smiled, amused. Perhaps she thought him sarcastic.

"Unlike some people," she said, "I do like a good work-out."

"Who doesn't?"

He knew Thor's fellows thought him a coward averse to blood-spilling, frightful at the thought of battle. Sif had mocked one such man the week before: "Anyone who's felt the lash of Loki's tongue wouldn't dare call him a coward."

"I myself always like a good spar," he said to her, "with someone who knows what they're doing."

Sif turned her head. Her hair tumbled, tangled and dark and shining with sweat, over her shoulder. Her eyes lidded. Her smile challenged.

"Then perhaps I'll see you there," she said. Her tone grew teasing: "If you would so honor me with your company."

"Oh, no," he said as lightly. He touched his hand to his chest and bowed his head. "You honor me."

She smiled and her teeth flashed, like a mountain cat showing its fangs. Her lashes were dark, her hazel eyes nearing brown. He would have asked if she hunted and if so, what. Then Thor came in again.

"I've found it," said Thor. He took in Sif's smile, how she'd crossed her arms. Thor pursed his lips extravagantly. "Has Loki been bothering you?"

"Not at all," Sif said. She glanced to him. Her smile first deepened then eased. A little flicker, like a candle's flame, blown. "I've bothered him."

"I might forgive you," said Loki. "I'll let you know."

Then Thor showed the whatever it was to Sif and she preceded him out of the room. Their steps faded, then their voices. Loki waited. The door remained empty. It was simple to think the room darker, but so he thought it. His fingers itched.

Loki took his book up again, then he set it down. He drummed his fingers on his thigh. His legs ached suddenly and his head was thick as if with soup. He would walk, he decided. The bite of autumn was in the air, and there were places he could go to where no one would bother him as he read.

He thought: a length of Sif's hair, curling at her throat as if wound about a finger.

He passed a hand over his hair, then he took his book and he left the room.

*

Sif fought in the fashion in which she walked: self-possessed, economical, graceful, and swaggering. A certain aesthetic principle informed the way in which she slid her foot out before her, how the rest of her followed, her sword swinging clean and level with her shoulder. She relished but did not spoil for fights. She was as quick with her wits as with her hands, her sword, a lance. She carried a shield and rarely used it.

In the wake of a skirmish with the twisted beasts which dwelt in the sunburnt lands, she fell beside Loki. Her arm touched his, her shoulder as well, and her skin was hot, sticky. He'd worn a tunic with no sleeves in concession to the heat. Now he was acutely aware of the sun at his back, how her arm was sweaty and red, how she pressed against him.

She turned her face to the sky. Her hair, pulled back, tumbled wildly. Dirt smudged her cheeks. Blood dried along her jaw.

"Why do you wear your hair so long?" He hadn't meant to ask it. Loki sucked the spit off his tongue, his clumsy tongue, and said, "It's a liability in battle."

She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes were narrow, her smile rakish. She was perfectly contained and ever expanding, and beside her he felt stripped, off-balance.

"When they see my hair," she said, "they know my strength. Only a great warrior would choose to flaunt a weakness."

"Understand I mean no offense," he said. "But that's idiotic. That's the sort of thing Thor would say."

Sif laughed and looked away from him. Sweat glistened above her lips. When she looked at him again, she did so fondly, as a friend to another.

"You only say that because you're jealous," she said.

*

"May I join you?"

Sif rose out of her crouch. Her chest, bound and bare but for the bindings, rose and fell in a rhythm which suggested she had been here for some time. He had watched her as she ran through a lengthy series of positions and strikes, her long legs cutting through the air, her arms whips, the sweat between her breasts a beacon flashing.

She tossed her hair back and smirked. Her tongue flickered over her lip.

"Only if you lose the coat," she said. "I'd hate to spoil it."

He shed it and set it over the end of a sword rack. The tails trailed through the dirt. Loki began to roll up his left sleeve.

"Shall we pick weapons?"

"Let's make it a fair fight," Sif played. "No weapons."

The right sleeve in place, he dropped his hands and turned to face her. She was smiling, that sharp smile which said, Well? Are you coming for it? He sighed and shook his head woefully.

"Then I'm afraid I have you at a disadvantage."

"So sure of yourself," she said, her short lashes low, her brow quirked as if to laugh at him.

"Tell me," he said with pointed sweetness, "do you always underestimate your opponents?" then he lashed at her on his toes.

Sif was quick, light on her feet. She dove for the side and came around again behind him. Her arm drew back to strike. He dodged left and rose at her right. Her elbow, which she jerked back, grazed his shoulder.

"Well done," he said. "You nearly got me."

"Don't worry," she promised. "I'll get you."

She dropped low beneath his arm and brought her hands, clasped together, toward the small of his back. He danced forward before she struck and spun around, opening distance between them. Sif flicked hair from her eyes. Her lips bunched.

Limbered, she'd a momentary advantage. Loki paced the edges of the yard, watching her as she considered the walls, his height, where to begin and how to do it. He stretched his arms out - she followed this - and tested his fingers.

"You're supposed to do that before you ask to spar," she called.

"I was only admiring the weather," he called back. "You've given me nothing more pressing to think of."

"If it's pressing you want," said Sif, then she darted for him.

The distance closed, Sif an arrow loosed at him, then he twisted away from her and struck at the back of her leg. His heel caught her calf. Sif threw her other leg forward, caught herself, and rounded on him. Her leg smashed through the air.

"Feeling winded," he asked, "or did you hurt your leg?"

"A horsefly bit me," she said dismissively.

She flipped her ponytail over her shoulder and came for him again, weaving as he struck at her and striking as he shivered backward on his heels. He could spin a trick for her, dazzle her vision, ring her with ghosts and glimmering mirrors.

Instead he slid beneath her arm and rose before her, near enough to touch, to press against her, to slide his fingers up her bindings and feel his wrist on his chest. He widened his eyes.

"Would you like me to hold still?"

Sif grabbed his shirt by the front and flipped him. The ground was hard, packed well; it did not yield, and his head, when it struck the ground, burst with lights. He blinked the sparks out. Sif loomed over him. She grinned wickedly. Her hair hung between them.

"Would you like me to help you stand?" she asked.

He caught her ankle and jerked. Sif stumbled but made to recover, and Loki, rising swiftly, pursued, bearing her to the ground. She drove her elbow back into his side. Planting her hands in the dirt, she bucked up, throwing him off. Loki landed in a roll and looked up. Her hair filled his vision; her fingers were at his throat. Her fingernails skated across his skin, his pulse, the knob in his throat which jerked when he swallowed. She twisted her hand in his collar.

"Got you," Sif whispered, and she threw him to his back.

His throat burned where she'd touched him. His side, where her elbow had bit into his ribs. His shoulders, where she'd drawn his tunic so the seams pinched. The suggestion of her filled him, like a lit torch spilt over onto dried leaves.

Sif grinned as she straddled him. The ends of her hair trembled against his cheek. She was a flame, always a flame, flickering and roaring and making him blind, too bright to look at, too hot to touch. Her hands wound in his tunic; it drew taut over his shoulders again, across his chest. She raised him up from the earth.

"Give," said Sif. Her breath gusted. Her breasts strained against her bindings. "Give, and maybe I'll be merciful."

Her thighs were warm and thick with muscle where she cradled his waist between her knees. She'd relaxed a fraction, her shoulders bending. If he surged upright, he could toss her off, roll her over, break free of her fingers on his chest.

Loki reached for her jaw. She was flushed, her skin damp with perspiration. Lightly, he stroked his thumb from her ear, where the bone hinged, to her square chin. She blinked once.

"I wish you wouldn't be," he said lowly. He cupped her nape and leaned up into her.

Her lips were chapped, dry though slicked with sweat. He had thought of kissing her before, though he'd never put a name to it. Things were easier to set aside and ignore if he did not recognize them. The angle of their mouths was wrong. Their noses bumped, and her teeth were hard on his lip, crushingly hard.

The first he'd thought of kissing her they had been children playing in a river beneath the dripping branches of a weeping willow. She had laughed at him for jumping after fish. Water darkened her hair, plastered it to her face. A drop fell from her nose. She hadn't been a very pretty girl, too awkward and long in the face for prettiness, too fierce to make up for it in other ways. He had wanted very badly to put his hands in her hair and lift his face to hers, for she was taller then than Loki who had been taller then than Thor, and kiss her fierce, long face. Instead he'd caught a little flickery silver fish and told her to kiss that.

They separated. Sif breathed out. Her thighs had tightened about him.

"Idiot," she said, "what _took_ you?"

She mashed her mouth to his. Their teeth banged, their noses clashed, and Loki laughed into her hot, wet mouth. He wound his fingers in her hair and fisted them.

"I never should have waited for you," she muttered. "I should have pushed you down myself."

"You did push me down," he noted.

She kissed him again, her teeth sharp on his lower lip. Her tongue ran along the inside, tracing the bottom of his teeth, then she withdrew and bit him again. Loki pulled on her hair. A fine tremor ran through her eyelids. Sif opened her eyes, her hazel eyes nearly green. Were his pupils as fat as hers?

Then her hands in his shirt tightened and she ripped it half down the front.

"Am I supposed to faint?" he asked, interested.

Sif rolled her eyes and growled, "Don't ruin it."

"Like you ruined my shirt?"

"You're ruining it," she said.

"Am I?" He scraped his fingers down her scalp. Her eyes darkened further still. "I'll try to do better," he said.

"You'll try to stop talking," she snapped and she bent to shut him up.

Her tongue was hot and quick as the rest of her. He caught it in his teeth and dragged at it as her nails dug into his chest, then pulled down. Her littlest nail, sharpest, pricked his nipple. Loki hissed.

Sif bit his lip, hard. Letting go, she said, "You pulled my hair."

"It's a liability," he said, and, "Anything's fair in a fight."

He tugged on her hair again, watching as her lips drew back, her lids fluttered. The bite of her nails in his skin made him think he burned, truly burned. Her lashes rose. She stared at him directly; she was ever direct, cutting through lies and tricks as easily as through the air. She leaned into him, her weight settling more fully on his belly.

"Is that so?" she asked.

Their lips brushed. He turned so his nose lay against her cheek and he said, "Anything."

She drove him back again, hard into the dust. Her kiss was brutal, her touch exacting. She consumed; she devoured. Loki bit at her lips, her jaw, the soft lobe of her ear. Sif gasped and dug her fingers into his ribs. The ache pierced him. Her teeth touched his cheek, her tongue next. He smoothed his hand down her hip. Her chest, so bound, flattened over his.

He wanted her bare. He wanted to be bare beneath her. Her hands were at his belly, his waist, her fingers on the laces. Her thumbnail scratched his hip. Between kisses, her tongue rolling between his lips then vanishing again as he chased it, she said, "You--should do--something. A trick."

He threw his hand out and thought, _No one is here, there is nothing here for you, you don't want to be here, and anyway, haven't you got something better to do?_ Power ran through his fingers into the dirt. Sif was working at her stays now, dragging the laces free. She tossed her head back. Her throat arched; her bound chest heaved. Her hair was dark and shining over his hand, his wrist, her shoulders.

She was very beautiful. The nearness of her arrested him. He wanted to run his hands through her hair and draw it tight, study the shivering of muscle beneath her skin, see how she burnt and twisted and rose higher still, unbanked and unrelenting. She fascinated him. He did not know how she cornered him as she did, how she saw suggestions of things he hid and others could not find.

He hadn't realized he talked till she curled her fingers in his own black hair and bent to nip his nose.

"You aren't half as clever as you think you are." She licked the sweat from his nose. "You always stare too long."

"You don't know," he said. It came out harsh. He had meant to tease.

Sif kissed him and said, "I do know." Her lips parted for speech. He opened his mouth and dug into hers before she'd chance to engulf him again. His tongue traced her teeth, and he dragged her lip into his mouth to worry it, to bite, to cut her off. Sif was smiling.

Between his legs, a light touch: Sif encircled his erection in her hand and held him to her. His chest stuck. He found no breath in her mouth, no give in the hard curves of her body as he arched into her hand. She sank upon him then, her body closed and then opening to Loki. She was slick and soft there. If he had thought her a candle before, a torch, then now she was a wildfire, and he did not know how to touch her without searing his hands.

She dropped a kiss in his clavicle, then another in the hollow above where his throat worked. The pressure was light, the touch nearly sweet. Her hips rolled against him in an unforgiving counterpoint. The small of his back felt sore, bruised for his stillness. He arched into her again, jerking up to meet her.

Sif made her way from his throat to his mouth. She rose, slightly, from his lap. Loki followed her. His fingers ached, wound so tightly in her hair. Sif said, "Come on," her breath a gift to his tongue. "Have you nothing else?" As if it were a game still.

Loki tucked his free hand low on her back and brought her down again. Her smile flickered. Her eyes lidded. She rose and descended, then she did it again, and her hair tumbled down her shoulder with the sun like fire in it. His hips stuttered. She tightened about him.

It was an easy thing then to flip her. She landed on her back in the dirt, and in the landing, Loki slid free of her. His knuckles twinged where he'd banged them, cradling her head. Sif smiled up at him. Her eyebrows arched at the ends. Her hair spilled out around her, like the branches of a tree.

Then she surged against him. Her legs fitted around his waist; she hooked her ankles together. The breath in his throat hardened. Reaching between them, he guided his cock to her. Sif bent, rising. She laughed, breathless, and it shook through her. He scraped his thumbnail over the little nub at her apex. Her eyelashes fluttered, low over her eyes.

"So," she said, "get on with it," and her legs tightened about him, forcing him down.

His hips cracked down and she arched to meet him. Her chest bindings were rough where his torn shirt gaped, scratchy on his skin, but the swell of her breasts was soft, so soft. She was wet on his fingers, around his cock, and her mouth when she kissed him, open and hungry, was wet, too. Even now, like this, she consumed him. How?

He cast a shadow over her; his head blocked the sun from her face. Her eyes opened. She smiled, not in challenge or in play. She simpled smiled. Sif laced her fingers together at the back of his neck. The tips were worn, callused, and they pulled goose pimples from his skin.

"I never should have waited for you," she'd said. Knees at his sides. Her arse light in his lap as she remained, poised to fight him. Sun a ghost of red in her dark hair.

Now her neck bowed. Loki bent to bite; instead he kissed the trembling evidence of her pulse. Sweat salted her skin. He kissed her again and sucked the sweat from her as they rutted desperately, Sif wound about him, Loki devoured. He flexed his fingers in her hair, her long, dark hair so fine and thick in his hand. Below, he pinched her clitoris.

Sif bucked. Her heels pushed into his back, hard so a thrill ran up his spine. He drove into her. Sif surrounded him. Her nails pricked his skin. She trembled and pressed closer to him, dragged him closer. He felt as if she burrowed into his flesh, a heat gathering where he was ever cool.

She exhaled. All of her pressed to him, and the trembling grew more pronounced, more severe. She said, "Loki," just that, just his name, harsh through her teeth, and she came around him, beneath him, within. She tightened everywhere: her hands about his neck, her legs about his waist, the muscles deep within her as he pushed deep again.

His tongue was loose. He knew it. He wanted to possess her. He wanted to press into her skin as she pressed into his. She was so hot and so fierce, and even in the dirt, with her hair oily with sweat, she shone. Light off a blade. He hid his face in her throat that she could not see it. He could not let her. His jaw tightened. When he breathed out, he shook.

Sif's fingers drew tight in his hair, and her feet at his back bent like the curve of a bow, and he gave in. The world coalesced to a point. Then, as he remembered, with time, how to breathe, to move, he opened his eyes.

Everything was bright, so awfully bright. He turned his face to her throat again. Sif stroked his nape, his shoulders. Her hands slipped beneath his collar. He felt the muscles which lay over her jaw move, felt a little tremor in her throat: she smiled.

"I've won," she said. "What do you say to that?"

Her breath still came half wild. She glistened in the sun. He wanted to cover her with his shadow again.

"I would say a rematch is needed," he said. "For accuracy's sake." He ran his drying finger up her bound chest. "If you're up to it."

She pushed him over onto his back, and it was her shadow which covered him. Her smile arched; it lit her face.

"Oh, believe me, Loki Silvertongue," she said. "I'm up for it."


End file.
